


Under the Water

by messageredacted



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-14
Updated: 2012-01-14
Packaged: 2017-10-29 13:20:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 599
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/320346
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/messageredacted/pseuds/messageredacted
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She just kept thinking of her brother, falling over the railing into the falls, his hands still grasping Sherlock Holmes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Under the Water

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written on 30 April 2011.

The funeral was suffocating, like a room filling up with water, full of too many people who hadn’t really known the deceased. They looked at Emily with pity and she wanted to claw their eyes out, but it was difficult enough just standing there, keeping her head above the flood of emotions that threatened to overwhelm her. Her brother was dead and if she didn’t move very carefully she was going to drown in it.

The casket was closed, of course. Jimmy had fallen off a cliff, down to the rocks and water below that churned itself up to a furious froth. No body, not even after they had dredged the place to look. But the water was so furious, and the river swept out to sea, and no one could have survived that fall. They had declared James Moriarty dead, and he had not died alone.

A stream of mourners came past Emily, clasping her hands and pulling her into hugs. Emily could barely make herself respond to them. She stood on tiptoe in her high heels, lifting her chin, standing with her back straight, trying to take deep enough breaths so when the grief came she wouldn’t suffocate. She was exhausted and upset and it had been a week since her brother had died and she had barely slept more than three hours a night since then.

She just kept thinking of her brother, falling over the railing into the falls, his hands still grasping Sherlock Holmes. Holmes was gone too, no body to recover, but Emily didn’t care about him. He was just the latest of Jimmy's obsessions, and maybe the papers and the police thought the two deaths were a tragic accident, but Emily knew better than that. Sherlock Holmes wasn’t the first man Jimmy had pulled under the water.

In the funeral home, Emily took a deep breath and then held it. Her aunt had mounted photographs on a poster to display in front of the coffin. Emily could see the photo of herself and Jimmy as children, wearing matching scarves that a relative had knitted for them. Jimmy was four in the picture, his sweet eyes looking somewhere above the camera. This was the Jimmy that the other mourners remembered, open and friendly and earnest. None of these people knew Jim. They hadn’t known him like Emily had known him: manipulative, genius, cruel, impulsive.

God, she was going to miss him.

She imagined him hitting the water and somehow surviving. Maybe, legs broken, he had tried to tread water, tipping back his head to keep his face out of the water. He would have gone under once and then, panicking, fought his way back up to the surface. He would have gone under a second time, and this time known that he was going to die. She wondered if Sherlock Holmes had been in the water with him. She wondered if Jim had stood on his shoulders, pushing Holmes down as he clawed his way up, fighting to get to the air. That’s what she would have done.

Emily felt the grief rise in her throat, but her eyes stayed dry. She peeled the photograph off the board of photos, crumpling it and putting it in her pocket. These people shouldn’t see Jim like this. She wished they could have seen the real him. She wished they had known him and loved him and feared him like she had. Jim deserved better than that. He was a genius, and he was her brother. And he may be dead, but he was not forgotten.


End file.
